Reel Affirmations 2003

BACK IN THE Â‘80s, long before U.S. protesters went to Seattle to upset the WTO, European anarchists were protesting the IMF and World Bank. And they were doing more — experimenting with collectives and non-monogamy and other anarchic and/or feminist value systems. In Gallant Girls, filmmaker Barbara Teufel and her comrades recount the evolution of their communities and their politics during the change-filled era immediately preceding the following the fall of the Berlin wall.

The movie gives an opportunity to see a relatively closed society emerge, develop, evolve, fracture, and separate all in a very short space in time, as opposed to hundreds or thousands of years. We see not only the effects of aging on the participants, as they grow and change their perspectives and their priorities, but the effects on the society itself. The exposition of the tale, wound a bit awkwardly between contemporary interviews and recollections and dramatized re-enactments, leaves something to be desired, but the rare glimpse into an essentially closed society is worth the trip.